Oracle on RHEL 6 , using ASM with or without ASMLIB

A while ago, but worth mentioning it for those customers with a roadmap based on Red Hat Linux. The status regarding RHEL 6 is the following:

– Oracle has indeed certified RHEL 6 for the Oracle database, see also the comments in this article, and my seperate blogpost about it.

– Red Hat announced recently an extended lifecyle (support) of version 5 and 6, from 7 to 10 years.

– Red Hat is making things harder by shipping its RHEL 6 kernel source as one big tarball, without breaking out the patches. Distribution in this form satisfies the GPL, but it makes life hard for anybody else wanting to see what has been done with this kernel

Maybe as a result of this: regarding ASMLIB Oracle mentioned in note 1089399.1 :

For RHEL 6, Oracle will provide ASMLib software and updates only when configured with a kernel distributed by Oracle. Oracle will not provide ASMLib packages for kernels distributed by Red Hat as part of RHEL 6. ASMLib updates will be delivered via Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN), which is available to customers with Oracle Linux support. ULN works with both Oracle Linux or Red Hat Linux installations, but ASMLib usage will require replacing any Red Hat kernel with a kernel provided by Oracle.

11 Comments

Remember, “no ASMLib” does not mean “no ASM”. In fact, the majority of people I speak to use UDEV rather than ASMLib anyway.

There is one future benefit of using ASMLib if you have a particular type of storage, but apart from that UDEV is simpler and doesn’t screw you up if you change your kernel without remembering to update your ASMLib libraries.

Not supporting ASMLib on RHEL6 in no way indicates you cannot/shouldn’t use ASM.

Thanks Brian! It even looks like it’s supported with the Red Hat kernel. Installation document state a requirement of the Red Hat kernel of 2.6.32-71.el6.x86_64 or later… But be aware of the following on http://linux.oracle.com/supported.html: Support and updates are provided for base Linux Server only. XFS, Red Hat Cluster Suite, GFS2, RoCE and other technologies provided via Add-ons for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 are not supported.

sarathi
December 6, 2012 at 8:06 am

Can i use RHEL 6.0 to configure Oracle RAC. I need to install ASMib for RHEL 6.is it possible?

Certainly you can use RHEL 6.0 together with Oracle RAC ( > 11.2.0.3) and ASM. If it’s possible to install ASMLIB: There are no ASMLib kernel drivers for RHEL 6 kernels. But the Oracle UEK kernel has drivers for ASMLIB. You can install the Oracle UEK2 kernel on your RHEL 6 installation (and so switching to Oracle Linux…) and then use ASMLIB. However I don’t advise to use ASMLIB. You are creating an extra dependency with your Operating System, and you have to switch to Oracle Linux.